On past albums, Texas native Katy Moffatt has tended to camouflage her flair for hard-country hurtin' songs beneath a familiar acoustic-folk veneer. Loose Diamond brings Moffatt's country leanings front and center without ignoring her broader folk, rock, and blues influences. Producer Dave Alvin has assembled a first-rate West Coast roots-country studio crew, including members of his own Guilty Men and Dwight Yoakam's band. Moffatt's voice sounds equally at home on Hank Williams Jr.'s honky-tonk howler "Stoned at the Jukebox" and on a slowed-down arrangement of the Blasters' roots-rocker "So Long Baby Goodbye." But the standout track is a duet with Alvin on the traditional folk standard "The Cuckoo" that benefits from Greg Leisz's raise-up-the-dead slide-guitar playing.
--Rick Mitchell, Amazon.com
Katy Moffatt: vocals, acoustic guitar
Rick Shea: electric and acoustic guitar, lap and pedal steel guitars, mandolin
David Jackson: electric and acoustic bass, accordion
Bobby Lloyd Hicks: drums and percussion, harmony vocals
Greg Liesz: dobro, weissenborn slide guitar
John Herron: piano
Brantley Kearns: fiddle, mandolin
Dick Fegy: electric guitar and mandolin on Fools Fall In Love
Steve Van Gelder: fiddle on Whiskey, Money, & Time
Dave Alvin: vocals and acoustic guitar on The Cuckoo,
electric guitar on So Long Baby Goodbye and
Waitin' For The Sun To Shine
All song arranged by Dave Alvin and Katy Moffatt
[except So Long Baby Goodbye which is based on an arrangement by Last Train Home]